Horses tumbled in bloody agony. A horse and cavalryman struck by a volley kept moving forward, turned in an instant from war's gaudiest killers into so much overdressed meat, but the meat could still smash a square's face apart by its sheer dead weight. The leading rank of the cavalry charge fell to smear its dying blood along the grass. Horsemen screamed as they were crushed by their own rolling horses. The riders coming behind could not avoid the carnage in front and the second rank rode hard into the flailing remnants of the first and the horses shrieked as their legs broke and as they tumbled down to slide to a halt just yards from the redcoats' lingering gunsmoke.
The rest of the charge was blocked by the horror before them and so it split into two streams of horsemen that galloped ineffectually down the sides of the rally square. Redcoats fired as the cavalry passed and then the charge was gone and the Colonel was telling his men to move on westwards. "Steady, boys, steady!" he called.
A man ran out and cut a horsehair-plumed helmet from the corpse of a Frenchman, then ran back into the rally square. Another volley came from the battalions waiting in square and suddenly the battered, harried fugitives of Poco Velha's defenders were back amidst the rest of the Seventh Division. They formed in the division's centre, just where a wide road led south and west between deep ditches. It was the road that went to the safe fords across the Coa, the road which went home, the road to security, but all that was left to guard it were the nine squares of infantry, a battery of light guns and the cavalry who had survived the fight south of Poco Velha.
The two battalions from Poco Velha formed small squares. They had suffered in the village's streets and on the spring grass of the meadows outside the village, yet their colours still flew: four bright flags amidst a division flying eighteen such flags, while around them circled the Empire's cavalry and to their north there marched two whole divisions of the Empire's foot soldiers. The two beleaguered battalions had reached safety, but it looked as though it would be short-lived for they had survived only to join a division that was surely doomed. Sixteen thousand Frenchmen now threatened four and a half thousand Portuguese and Britons.
The French horsemen wheeled away from the musket fire to re-form ranks made ragged by the morning's charge. The French infantry stopped to form for their new attack, while from the east, from across the stream, there came new French artillery fire that aimed to batter the nine waiting squares into carnage.
It was two hours after dawn. And in the meadows south of Fuentes de Onoro and far from any help an army seemed to be dying. While the French marched on.
"He has a choice," Marshal Massйna remarked to Major Ducos. The Marshal did not really want to be talking to a mere major on this morning of his triumph, but Ducos was a prickly fellow who had an inexplicable sway with the Emperor and so Andrй Massйna, Marshal of France, Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling, found time after breakfast to make certain Ducos understood the day's opportunities and, more important, to whom this day's laurels would belong.
Ducos had ridden out of Ciudad Rodrigo to witness the battle.
Officially Massйna's attack was merely an effort to move supplies into Almeida, but every Frenchman knew the stakes were much higher than the relief of one small garrison stranded behind the British lines. The real prize was the opportunity to cut Wellington off from his base and then destroy his army in one glorious day of bloodletting. Such a victory would end British defiance in Spain and Portugal for ever and would bring in its wake a roll call of new titles for the wharf rat who had joined the French royal army as a private. Maybe Massйna would earn a throne? The Emperor had redistributed half the chairs in Europe by making his brothers into kings, so why should not Marshal Massйna, Prince of Essling, become the king of somewhere or other? The throne in Lisbon needed a pair of buttocks to keep it warm, and Massйna reckoned his bum was as good for the task as any of Napoleon's brothers. And all that was needed for that glorious vision to come true was victory here at Fuentes de Onoro and that victory was now very close. The battle had opened as Massйna had intended and now it would close as he intended.
"You were saying, Your Majesty, that Wellington has a choice?" Ducos prompted the Marshal who had drifted into a momentary daydream.
"He has a choice," Massйna confirmed. "He can abandon his right wing which means he also abandons any chance of retreat, in which case we shall break his centre in Fuentes de Onoro and hunt his army down in the hills for the next week. Or he can abandon Fuentes de Onoro and try to rescue his right wing, in which case we shall fight him to the death on the plain. I'd rather he offered me a fight on the plain, but he won't. This Englishman only feels safe when he has a hill to defend, so he'll stay in Fuentes de Onoro and let his right wing go to a hell of our making."
Ducos was impressed. It had been a long time since he had heard a French officer sound so optimistic in Spain, and a long time too since the eagles had marched into battle with such confidence and alacrity. Massйna deserved applause and Ducos happily offered the Marshal the compliments he desired, but he also added a caution. "This Englishman, Your Majesty," he pointed out, "is also skilled at defending hills. He defended Fuentes de Onoro on Friday, did he not?"
Massйna sneered at the caution. Ducos had elaborated such devious schemes to undermine British morale, but they only sprang from his lack of faith in soldiers, just as Ducos's presence in Spain sprang from the Emperor's lack of faith in his marshals. Ducos had to learn that when a marshal of France put his mind to victory then victory was certain. "On Friday, Ducos," Massйna explained, "I tickled Fuentes de Onoro with a pair of brigades, but today we shall send three whole divisions into that little village. Three big divisions, Ducos, full of hungry men. What chance do you think that little village has?"
Ducos considered the question in his usual pedantic way. He could see Fuentes de Onoro clearly enough; the village was a meagre sprawl of peasants' hovels being pounded to dust by the French artillery. Beyond the dust and smoke Ducos could see the graveyard and battered church where the road angled uphill to the plateau. The hill was steep, to be sure, but not very high, and on Friday the attackers had cleared the village of its defenders and gained a lodgement among the lower stones of the graveyard and one more attack would surely have driven the eagles clear across the ridge's crest and into the soft belly of the enemy beyond. And now, out of sight of that enemy, three whole divisions of French infantry were waiting to attack, and in the van of that attack Massйna planned to put the elite of his attacking regiments, the massed companies of grenadiers with their plumed bearskins and fearful reputation. The cream of France would march against a raddled army of half-broken men.
"Well, Ducos?" Massйna challenged the Major for his verdict.
"I must congratulate Your Majesty," Ducos said.
"Which means, I suppose, that you approve of my humble plan?" Massйna asked sarcastically.
"All France will approve, Your Majesty, when it brings victory."
"Bugger the victory," Massйna said, "so long as it brings me Wellington's whores. I'm tired of my present bunch. Half of them are poxed, the other half are pregnant and the fat one bawls her eyes out every time you strip the bitch for duty."
"Wellington has no whores," Ducos said icily. "He controls his passions."
The one-eyed Massйna burst into laughter. "Controls his passions! God on his cross, Ducos, but you'd make smiling a crime. Controls his passions, does he? Then he's a fool, and a defeated fool at that." The Marshal wheeled his horse away from the Major and snapped his fingers at a nearby aide. "Let the eagles go, Jean, let them go!"
The drums called for the muster and three divisions stirred themselves for action. Men drained coffee dregs, stowed knives and tin plates in haversacks, checked their cartridge pouches and plucked their muskets from the pyramid stacks. It was two hours after a Sunday dawn and time to close the battle's jaws as all along the Marshal's line, from south in the plain to north where the village smoked under its numbing cannonade, the French smelt victory.